


Rowing (2)

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Devastation-verse [7]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-07
Updated: 2004-08-07
Packaged: 2018-10-21 07:03:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10680174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity





	Rowing (2)

The tumultuous river reminded Jack Shaftoe of theatrickal productions he'd seen, not because their rendition of a sea-storm had been so very accurate (neat, curving waves in wooden lines, water by the bucketful, a steady misting of spray from an ingenious device above the stage) but because it had _not_ ; the company's omissions had included the roar and slap of what were now sizeable breakers, the lowering glare of the evening sun as it shouldered its way through piles of thunderheads, the unsettlingly random motion of the gig, and -- last, but by no means least -- the small, regular, human noise of the oars in their rowlocks as Captain Jack Sparrow rowed (his manner not exactly nonchalant, but not frantic either) towards the precise point, somewhere south-east of them amid the solid mass of water, sea and rain combined in a briny curtain, where the _Black Pearl_ lay at anchor awaiting them, holding (or so Jack Shaftoe profoundly hoped) warmth, dryness and possibly even clothes that didn't cling to his skin as though they were growing into him; he hadn't been afforded time to collect his effects, and though Jack Shaftoe preferred to travel light -- so much more convenient, in a crisis, to be able to up and run without any tedious preparations -- there were a few possessions that he regretted the loss of, including a fine lawn shirt and a set of gentleman's undergarments, as yet unstained by use; a good long pistol, too, though the grip was inscribed (so Flora had told him) with another man's initials; Jack'd had plans for that pistol, involving money demanded with menaces (no need to actually kill anyone, or even hurt 'em very much, as Jack had discovered to his relief, for though he'd no especial qualms about murder -- him or me, mate, him or me -- he hesitated to take a life when it was tidier not to) and he would have mourned the weapon's loss, in recent days, had he not been rather preoccupied with his own reversals, losses, misappropriations and the like: for what Jack Sparrow had so _cavalierly_ taken from him (Jack Shaftoe ground his teeth at the thought of the foppish dandies he'd heard labelled Cavalier) along with several Liberties, before taking -- nay, abducting -- Jack's own person and heading off into this watery waste, was something at once intangible and extremely precious to Jack, and he wasn't sure if what he was missing was the narrowly-defined innocence of his previously virgin arse, or the lonely, ennobling singularity of purpose with which he liked to think he'd faced the prospect of lifelong chastity, enforced by certain anatomickal deficiencies as a result of that cursed quack's purported Pox-cure; at any rate, Jack Sparrow had cured him of some of his preconceptions about that particular aspect of his life, and from Jack Shaftoe's observations of the flamboyant pirate captain, Sparrow bid fair to shake a few other pillars that had previously, steady as stone, supported Jack Shaftoe's Grand View of the Entire World; and while Jack Shaftoe had already professed himself -- to the whores, Vagabonds and deserters who had hung upon his wit at various Southwark stews -- to be tired of London, and had advertised his plans to sail for France at the next opportunity (or, at any rate, whenever the offer of a free passage coincided with a state of mild intoxication, a remission of the flux which'd been plaguing him for the last couple of months, and a moment at which various transactions had been completed and others not yet spawn'd), there to seek employment, or (better) paid unemployment in the armies of one European Power or another; it wasn't the ultimate aim of his existence (an existence rendered rather more miserable by the cruel, and still occasionally painful, removal of the wherewithal to afford himself carnal satisfaction) but it would have passed the time, and given Shaftoe further opportunities for merry mayhem, debauchery, trickery and the perpetration of his reputation; and now that he came to think of it, it was surely exceedingly odd of Jack Sparrow to abandon, half-written, the Grand Tale of his Life -- by which Shaftoe meant, not any suicidal impulse in the pirate (though rowing steadily into this storm, with his dark eyes fixed hungrily upon Jack Shaftoe himself, giving him the urge to look over his shoulder in case Sparrow's gaze was drawn by something else, could easily be defined as suicidal, if only because arrival on the coast of France -- surely near, by now -- without a considerable arsenal of pistols, muskets, hangers and pikes was tantamount to wandering around, say, Southwark, waving a purse-ful of specie and flaunting one's lack of due care and attention) but Sparrow's abrupt departure from London Town without a breath of a word to George Locksley, the Nottingham clerk who'd so dutifully scribbled down the minutae -- much embellished, Jack Shaftoe felt sure -- of Sparrow's exotically piratical life, a Life doomed, if indeed it saw print at all without further funds from its subject in order to ease the pains of publication, to remain incomplete, volume one in a series which would never commit itself to an ending; and Shaftoe, staring back at Sparrow as though that dark, hot gaze were a challenge instead of a promise, realised for the first time that _he_ , Jack Shaftoe, Half-Cocked Jack, so-called King of the Vagabonds, might very well be the reason for Sparrow's unreasonable actions; that Sparrow's precipitate removal from the Pool of London, with his hastily-summoned _Black Pearl_ bare of canvas in the calm air, driven upriver, and then down again to this swirling estuarine waste, by the long sweeps, might have more to do with what had transpired in that dirty garret above Mother Williams' brothel than with any great desire on Jack Sparrow's part to seek warmer climes, better comestibles, finer rum or more traditionally obliging bedmates; in short, that Jack Sparrow might possibly have been as amazed, as astonished, as overwhelmed by the Event -- 'by', Jack Shaftoe amended doggedly to himself, in the interest of there being one person to whom he did not lie, 'by the act of him _buggering_ you, Jack my lad' -- as had Shaftoe himself; for Shaftoe, of course, it had come as rather more of a shock to discover that, despite red-hot irons and wound-fever and the general unpleasantness of pox-chancres on itchy healing flesh, he was still capable of experiencing extreme carnal pleasure, and spending his seed while he was about it, and _enjoying_ \-- ah, that's the crux, is it not? -- the feeling of another man's cock piercing him, impaling him and spending within him; it had not (could not have) come as quite such a surprise to Jack Sparrow, and so Shaftoe was at a loss to explain Sparrow's unscheduled departure, taking with him the temporarily dazed and speechless Shaftoe, leaving behind him a half-finished novel of piratical excess, Jack Shaftoe's best shirt, and -- for all intents and purposes -- the greater part of Shaftoe's wits; for there was something about Sparrow's expression that drove all rational thought from his mind and left him only with a sharp desire to achieve the _Black Pearl_ and, subsequently, private proximity with her captain.


End file.
